Santa Cruz Cluster Youth Ministry

Santa Cruz Cluster Youth Ministry We serve the youth of the Santa Cruz Cluster of the Parishes of the Holy Cross (incl. St. Peter's R.

14/03/2026

Today the Suburban Vicariate had it’s Eucharistic Youth Encounter Retreat - Led by Fr Jesse Maingot at Our Lady Of Fatima RC Church, Curepe, 🙏🏽🕊️ .tt

19/02/2026

Daily Gospel Reflection (by Bishop Robert Barron)
Thursday, February 19, 2026

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Gospel Reading: Luke 9:22–25

Friends, our Gospel today lays out Jesus’s conditions for discipleship. For all of us sinners, to varying degrees, our own lives have become god. That is to say, we see the universe turning around our ego, our needs, our projects, our plans, and our likes and dislikes. True conversion—the metanoia that Jesus talks about—is so much more than moral reform, though it includes that. It has to do with a complete shift in consciousness, a whole new way of looking at one’s life.

Jesus offered a teaching that must have been gut-wrenching to his first-century audience: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” His listeners knew what the cross meant: a death in utter agony, nakedness, and humiliation. They didn’t think of the cross automatically in religious terms, as we do. They knew it in all of its awful power.

Unless you crucify your ego, you cannot be my follower, Jesus says. This move—this terrible move—has to be the foundation of the spiritual life.

18/02/2026

Daily Gospel Reflection (by Bishop Robert Barron)
Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Ash Wednesday

Gospel Reading: Matthew 6:1–6, 16–18

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus prescribes the essential disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Let’s focus on fasting and almsgiving.

The appetites for food and drink are so pressing, so elemental, that, unless they are quelled and disciplined, they will simply take over the soul. They are like children who clamor constantly for attention and who, if indulged, will in short order run the house.

Therefore, if the passion for God is to be awakened, the more immediately pressing desires must be muted, and this is the purpose of fasting. We go hungry and thirsty so that the deepest hunger and thirst might be felt. In a way, fasting is like the “calming of the monkey mind” effected by the Rosary: Both are means of settling the superficial mind that darts from preoccupation to preoccupation.

But food and drink are not the only objects of concupiscent desire. Material things and wealth are also ready substitutes for the passion for God. Thus, a kind of fasting from what money can buy is an important practice. How often Jesus recommends that his disciples give to the poor, and how often throughout the Christian tradition has almsgiving been emphasized.

17/02/2026

Daily Gospel Reflection (by Bishop Robert Barron)
Tuesday, February 17, 2026

Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel Reading: Mark 8:14–21

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus warns his disciples against the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod. Conversely, he wanted them to be the leaven that would transform their culture.

The Second Vatican Council spoke of the universal call to holiness—the summons of all the baptized to be a transforming leaven in the wider society. The Vatican II fathers wanted to inspire a generation of great Catholic professionals in the hopes that such people would carry the holiness they learned in the Church out to their areas of specialization in the secular world.

The Church manifests the way of ordering things born of love—love for God and love for neighbor. Generosity, peace, nonviolence, and trust will give rise to a new way of ordering things. This is true of a family, a school, a parish, a community, a nation-state.

Now, how in the world does one get this project off the ground? As should be clear to even the most naive person, this never happens all at once, overnight. Rather, in small ways, people begin living according to the Lord’s ways. And then, in God’s time, this new community begins to have a leavening effect on the wider society.

16/02/2026

Daily Gospel Reflection (by Bishop Robert Barron)
Monday, February 16, 2026

Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel Reading: Mark 8:11–13

Friends, in today’s Gospel, the Pharisees ask Jesus for a sign from heaven. They are testing him because they have no faith or trust in him.

Faith is an attitude of trust in the presence of God. Faith is openness to what God will reveal, do, and invite. It should be obvious that in dealing with the infinite, all-powerful God, we are never in control.

This is why we say that faith goes beyond reason. If we can figure it out, calculate precisely, predict with complete accuracy, we’re in charge—and by definition, we are not dealing with a person. Would you use any of those descriptors in talking about your relationship with your husband, wife, or best friend? Instead, you enter into an ever-increasing rapport of trust with such people.

One of the most fundamental statements of faith is this: Your life is not about you. You’re not in control. This is not your project. Rather, you are part of God’s great design. To believe this in your bones and to act accordingly is to have faith.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxT4nVUL5CI
15/02/2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxT4nVUL5CI

Always following God’s law is a hard and difficult road. Jon Jue-Wong, SJ reflects on how God is always eager to help us do so. Based on the readings for the...

Address

San Juan

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Santa Cruz Cluster Youth Ministry posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Place Of Worship

Send a message to Santa Cruz Cluster Youth Ministry:

Shortcuts

Share

Category